Secular Homeschooling

The word ‘experiment’ seems important to Max. He often says that he wants to do experiments. The lure of discovery and play is what I think gets him every time, probably more play than discovery, but the two work well together. I was beginning to scrape some experiments together that we could do when I ran across this fantastic tome brimming with ideas that would satisfy any child’s need to explore. It has only just arrived and I’ve paged through it, looking for our starting point. There is more than enough material here to keep him happily occupied for a long time!

Exploratopia: More than 400 Kid-Friendly Experiments and Explorations for Curious Minds

It’s divided into three big parts. Part 1 is titled “Exploring Yourself” and contains creative experiments designed to help kids understand the human body and how it works. We’ll save this first part for a unit study on the human body, maybe next year (Max is kind of squeamish, so he says he’s not ready for that unit study anytime soon!)

Part 2 is titled “Exploring Interesting Places” and involves experiments around the kitchen, backyard, bathroom, playground and beach.

Part 3 is titled “Exploring Interesting Stuff” and this is where we’ll likely start. Language, math, money, paper, light, color, optical illusions, sound and electricity are a few of the topics sprinkled in this section.

Looks like a fantastic used purchase, one that we’ll play with for a while. I’m relieved to have a good resource to turn to when he says he wants to start experimenting!

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